April 03, 2015

PEACE PREZ? REALLY?

Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is being praised as "historic" by the media--even before it's complete on June 30th if the details are worked out. And the devil is in the details, right? So getting a country to stop developing it's nuclear weapons is a good thing? Then why doesn't the US give up theirs? Does no one see the irony in the fact that this "historic" weapons deal is negotiated by the USA, the only country to ever use nuclear weapons against another country? Obama didn't nuke Japan. But he does preside over a nation that spends more on defense than most other countries combined and somehow we're patting ourselves on the backs because we've stopped another country's weapon development? Hmmm. And we give Israel $3 billion per year so that it can maintain it's weapons (including nukes) but that makes sense because we like Israel and it is a democracy like us. (Try telling minorities, students and seniors who now can't vote without an ID in many states how we are promoting democracy in the Middle East as it's eroded here.) Even though Israel is hateful towards it's neighbors, we like Israel so they can keep their nuclear weapons. We do not like Iran, so they can't. Iran is located right between Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries the US has occupied/pummeled/destroyed for over a decade. If I were Iran, I'd want nukes as protection against the US and the weapons we buy for Israel.

Obama thinks that this deal is better than the alternative: war. His press secretary said yesterday that if the deal didn't go through that war against Iran was an option. Iran isn't attacking us, yet the White House just said that if Iran doesn't do what we want, we'll attack them. That's US foreign policy in a nutshell. We impose sanctions--i.e. an economic war--until Iran is forced to do what we want. Or we'll attack them. Sounds like the US is more of a bully than a peacemaker. Why shouldn't Iran have the right to protect itself as we do? Especially right now--Iran not only has belligerent neighbors like Israel but the whole Middle East is exploding into chaos.

I've just watched Obama's entire speech and was floored by his gibberish which the media is praising. I'm no fan of Iran, but I don't think the US is any better. Here are a few excepts:

Obama says that the only alternative to this deal is to bomb Iran and we don't want another war in the Middle East. That's odd--the US is largely responsible for starting much of the conflict in the Middle East. ISIS was born from the chaos that the US left by attacking Iraq, so now we're back there. (Fighting alongside Iran, actually.) We're back in Afghanistan, too. The longest war in US history just got longer when Obama announced that we'd maintain troops there and financial aid until 2017. After a campaign promise that we'd be out by 2014. We've been hitting Pakistan and Yemen with largely secret drones for years and we're also fighting ISIS, who we helped to create, in Syria. Yet "we" don't want another war in the Middle East? Most of the Republican party and many dems do.

Obama makes sure to give a shout-out to Israel, because they would prefer war with Iran over this deal. He doesn't want to send the message that we aren't still in Israel's corner so even during the toughest moments with the Bibi Netanyahu fiasco recently, we must reassure that US aid to Israel won't stop. As you prepare your taxes this year, enjoy the fact that Americans contribute more to Israel's defense than even Israelis do. The truth is that our unholy alliance Israel is destabilizing the Middle East. We're seen as the enemies of muslims because our money funds Israel's aggression towards Palestine.

Obama claims that the sanctions against Iran can snap back at any time. We have, he claims, a long history of ill will between us as a result of:

IRAN'S PROXY WARS WHICH DESTABILIZE THE MIDDLE EAST. Hmmm. Like the money we just gave Saudi Arabia to attack Yemen, which is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran? Like the weapons we are funneling to Ukraine, hoping to jump in on any new conflict which will require more contracts for our defense industry? Like the sanctions we just imposed on Venezuela after Obama lied and said they were a threat to the US because we don't like their politics? We've got a nerve to diss proxy wars.

IRAN'S HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. Because the US's well-documented torture like water boarding, uncharged prisoners held for a decade at Guantanamo and black sites even in Chicago where people are disappeared are picnics thrown by sweethearts. Some might consider using military weapons on protesters in Ferguson and Occupy Wall Street to be human rights violations of freedom of speech and assembly. Or gearing our police forces to target men of color and letting the murdering cops go free in secret trials like Eric Garner's. But the US won't tolerate another country's human rights violations. Ours are fine, though.

IRAN'S SPONSORING OF TERRORISM. We just got the death toll from Iraq, the war we should never have started against a country which had nothing to do with 9/11 and no WMD. The conservative estimate was 1 million Iraqis dead. I'd say that any country who kills a million people for no reason is a terrorist nation. Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and Iran haven't senselessly murdered a fraction of the innocents wrongly killed US soldiers. Yet we won't tolerate Iran's ties to terrorism on principle. The murderer of 1 million people dreams that it has principles.

So let the corporate media tell you what a great job Obama has done with this "historic" deal, if it ever gets finished. But if Obama truly valued peace, wanted a stable Middle East and wanted to squash human rights violations & terrorism in the world, the US should impose sanctions on itself.